Dynamic designs Creating beautiful floral artistry at Petals and Posies
BY LISA SAVAGE
Petals and Posies designed the church door flowers for a local event planner in Paducah.
ALL IN THE FAMILY Creating beautiful floral designs comes naturally to Wilferd and her family. Years ago, she worked in her mother’s florist and took over for a few years in the 1990s. They both operated as brick and mortar businesses. Through the years friends and family requested they decorate for events, and that led Wilferd to open her own business. “Friends started asking us to make arrangements for special events, and it just grew from there,” she says. The company now has its own base of customers and works for well-known event planners from Paducah and Dallas, Texas. WK&T Telecommunications Cooperative
Photos courtesy of Mackenzie Lynn Photography.
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ellie Wilferd held her breath as her sister balanced on a ladder 10 feet in the air. A 3-foot-wide piece of concrete separated Wilferd’s sister from the front door of the church as she made adjustments to the flowers framing the door. The flowers created an elaborate entrance for the wedding and quite a spectacular backdrop for bridal photographs. It was one of Wilferd’s many creations for weddings, receptions and large events for Petals and Posies, a floral design business she opened in 2018. “We love to create features that are beyond your average floral arrangements or displays,” she says. “When the client sees our work and they’re pleased, it gives you that sense of accomplishment, and it makes all the hard work worth it.”
Petals and Posies designed the floral wall for a corporate event planner based in Dallas, Texas.
Wilferd, with help from her sister, Natalie Morgan, and mother, Patricia Morris, creates elaborate designs and arrangements as focal points for events. The creations start at Wilferd’s home in Farmington in a room above a four-car garage. She uses an air conditioner and thermal curtains to create a cooler for the live flowers, delivered the day work begins. When it’s time for a big event, it’s all hands on deck, both at the studio and at the site of the event, and Wilferd says she couldn’t do it without her family.
One of her favorite creations featured an 8-by-12-foot floral wall for a corporate event. Its design required more than 10,000 stems of flowers — primarily varieties of garden roses, hydrangeas and carnations — along with silvery greens like eucalyptus. It took three days to build the frame and place the water-soaked foam tiles that held the flowers in place. “Placing the flowers and greens was literally an overnight feat,” Wilferd says. They started placing the flowers at 6 p.m. the night before the event, worked until 3 a.m. and finished the next day. “We returned to the event that night to watch the guests ooh and aah over the wall,” she says. “They had so much fun getting their group pictures made in front of the wall. Designing the wall was a feat in itself, but watching the people enjoy our creation made all the physical pain and lack of sleep worth it.”
July/August 2019 | 9
